2:16 PM,
Mar. 5, 2014

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Written by

Marty Rosen
| Special to the Courier-Journal

In 1984, when Larry Dowlat left his native Trinidad and moved to Louisville, he was fascinated by restaurants like the old Blue Boar and Jay's Cafeteria. "It was as if you could eat with your eyes," he recalled in a telephone interview.

That's a pretty apt description. In what now seems the golden age of cafeteria dining, such places were staples of the dining scene across the country, but especially in the South and the Midwest.